A wealth of news

Between the holidays and a stack of papers I still haven’t finished grading, I’ve missed some items I need to go back for, such as Tim Rutten and Russell Baker on the distorting effect of affluence on news coverage.

Here’s Rutten:

To the extent any bias is generally operative in the news media today, it is the middle-class quietism that the majority of reporters and editors share with other Americans. They are the suburban voters who now cast the majority of ballots in our presidential elections — mildly libertarian on social issues, mildly conservative on fiscal matters, preoccupied with issues of personal and financial security.

He goes on to quote at length from Baker’s response to a letter to the New York Review of Books:

…something more fundamental than household economics may be reshaping journalistic attitudes toward public issues. Today’s top-drawer Washington newspeople are part of a highly educated, upper-middle-class elite; they belong to the culture for which the American political system works exceedingly well. Which is to say, they are, in the pure sense of the word, extremely conservative.

Most probably passed childhood in economically sheltered times, came to adulthood in the years of plenty, went to good colleges where they developed conventionally progressive social consciences, and have now inherited the comforting benefits that sixty years of liberal government have created for the middle class.

This is not a background likely to produce angry reporters and aggressive editors. …

Baker goes on to say that these affluent journalists cannot be expected to write with real passion or understanding about something like America’s health care crisis, because that crisis does not affect them or anyone they know.

His argument came to mind as I read the wire reports on “Health Savings Accounts” that we ran in the paper I work for. HSAs are a new tax shelter that encourages those who can afford it to adopt higher-deductible health insurance. To take advantage of this new subsidy/benefit, one needs to have an extra $2,500 to $4,500 in disposable income lying about. Most Americans don’t have that kind of money, but most columnists and decision-making editors do. None of the articles we ran seemed to consider that the appeal of this program might be limited by the fact that so few can afford to take advantage of it.

As Rutten points out, this isn’t an example of bias, but of obliviousness. The problem is not the journalists’ affluence per se, but their failure to grasp that their affluence makes them exceptional. Articles written by and for the exceptionally affluent are irrelevant to the majority of their readers.

At the same time, of course, these same journalists are wringing their hands over their inability to reach “younger” readers. The trendy solution to this problem is to produce condescending, contentless free tabloids with lots of photos of last week’s hot entertainers. It never occurs to the publishers of these tabloids that this age demographic also comprises an economic demographic that their papers largely ignore.

My paper’s most recent Sunday real estate section features a typical story about what they consider a typical home. It costs $500,000. Articles like that alienate most 18-34-year-old readers.

Oh God, yes. Right on. I’m better off than most of my 25-35 year old friends economically, and that sort of stuff alienates *me!*

Kate

I was just commenting on this sort of thing the other day while looking at bridal magazines.
I’m a 30 year old graduate student, trying to plan a simple, low-cost wedding, but every wedding featured in these magazines costs tens of thousands of dollars. The wedding dresses that they feature cost more than I plan on spending on my entire wedding ($1500). These journalists are way, way out of touch with my (and many other people’s) reality.

Chris

The fact that they come from a higher economic background does not in itself mean that they can’t understand the plight of those below them. The fact that they are mostly lazy hacks prevents them from understanding. If they bothered to interview or even see a few people outside of their economic bubble, maybe they would get it.

Jon H

In addition to HSA’s, there’s now talk about USA’s – unemployment savings accounts.
At least they seem to have taken the ‘use it or lose it’ restriction out of the HSA.

Kevin Carson

This gives the lie to the idea that “radical” is a more extreme version of “liberal,” on some kind of continuously graded “left-wing” spectrum. NPR liberalism is just the ideology of the Bobos who control the corporate economy. There’s nothing “radical” or “leftist” about them. Just a bunch of soccer moms who want the nanny state to keep the underclass properly supervised so their little white bread world of suburbs and gated communities will be orderly and squeaky-clean.
As Chomsky pointed out, most journalists are “liberal” in the sense that they hate guns and favor abortion rights. But radical, in the sense of a genuine critique of the existing system of power, they definitely aren’t